Movie review: Geoffrey Rush dazzles in 'Final Portrait'

By Al Alexander/For the Patriot Ledger

Friday

Apr 6, 2018 at 5:39 AM

For the first time since 2007’s “Blind Date,” Stanley Tucci returns to the director’s chair with “Final Portrait,” another of his quirky, low-budget gems. While he’s never topped the quality of his 1996 debut, “Big Night,” he nonetheless remains a part-time filmmaker who stirs fascination, as is the case with his latest, a largely two-hander about the oddball friendship between writer James Lord and Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti.

As played by Geoffrey Rush, Giacometti is a cross-wired discombobulation of tics and abrupt mood swings unfolding under a shock of hair and an ever-present dangling cigarette. We first spot him sitting alone at one of his Paris exhibitions in September 1964, where he’s happened upon by friend and author Lord, himself a bit of a strange bird. He asks Lord to sit for him; a portrait he promises will take no longer than three hours. Little does Lord realize those three hours are going to be spread over three weeks due to Giacometti’s fussy, limited attention span.

This leaves plenty of time for the writer - and us - to observe the far-ranging peculiarities of an artist at work. And, for the most part, it’s an absorbing endeavor, as a parade of Giacometti’s muses drop by the hovel of a studio he shares with his equally talented brother, Diego (Tony Shalhoub, a Tucci regular, in top form). The most frequent visitor, much to the disgust of Alberto’s long-suffering wife, Annette (Sylvie Testud), is his young, beautiful prostitute, Caroline (Clémence Poésy in a break-out turn), a clever women with impatient pimps the absent-minded Giacometti often forgets to pay.

To say it unfolds at a leisurely pace would be a vast understatement. But the actors, particularly Rush with his best part in years, somehow keep you riveted over a 90-minute runtime that smartly never wears out its welcome. True, the many scenes of Lord posing on a chair as Alberto jabs away at his canvas - blending a bland blend of whites, blacks and grays - grow repetitive, but it’s compensated by a rare opportunity to watch how the mind of a celebrated artist works.

Tucci’s script, culled from Lord’s memoir, “A Giacometti Portrait,” is every bit as serendipitous as the artist he’s profiling. One minute we’re in Giacometti’s studio, the next at a Paris bistro or bar and the next on a slow walk through an ancient cemetery. The one constant is Rush, who renders Giacometti as a frazzled genius forever giving into his worst instincts. Yet, his Giacometti is never less than lovable in a mad professor sort of way.

What’s lacking is any real insight into how - or why - the people closest to Giacometti endure his affectations and impetuous nature. Hammer’s Lord is even more of an enigma, as you’re left to wonder what it is that gives him the patience to sit day after day for a self-loathing artist seeking a level of perfection he knows he’ll never achieve. Same for Testud’s Annette. Why does she put up with her husband’s almost daily infidelities?

The film looks terrific, though, thanks to director of photography Danny Cohen who shoots with a freeform flair that nicely mixes styles, from a New Wave-ish scene in which Lord, Alberto and Caroline race through the French countryside in an open-top sports car to the desaturated hues inside Giacometti’s studio, which is so devoid of color it almost looks black and white. Yet, it’s the performances that you come away remembering most. Hammer, as is his wont, remains a very stiff, measured actor, but his co-stars are anything but in making their work resonate far beyond anything in the script. Like Giacometti’s works, they’re a thing of beauty.